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Lot Essay
By the 1920s Munnings's reputation was already such that demand for his work was international. His sole visit to the United States and Canada was in 1924, and the six months he spent there witnessed a busy schedule of social engagements and portrait commissions. He had also been enlisted as one of the judges of the 23rd Annual International Exhibition at Pittsburgh by Homer St Gaudens, the Director of the Carnegie Institute. Having crossed safely from Southampton to New York on the Berengaria, Munnings admitted 'Little did I dream ... of the gloriously mad days ahead of me (op. cit p. 160). After brief stays in New York, Washington and then Pittsburgh, Munnings travelled to Massachusetts. On leaving Boston, he toured the New England coastline, then took up an invitation to go to Long Island so that the members of the American polo team could sit for their portraits. Even though Prohibition was being enforced with full vigour, Munnings and his hosts evidently did not find their drinking habits constrained. He clearly possessed tremendous stamina and even the strain of more or less continuous party-going does not appear to have distracted him from his professional commitments.
The time he spent on Long Island was memorable and he recalls the details vividly in his autobiography: 'These Long Islanders were most hospitable folk. Their way of life in their homes on well-wooded estates adjoining each other was, without doubt, beyond description. I should want a new volume to write about them. - Of the handsome, swarthy-looking, champion polo-player, Devereux Milburn; his lovely wife; dear Louis Stoddard, who sat for me on a famous polo mare, Belle-of-All. Of Sidney Fish and his wife; and their home near a pond where dwelt some enormous bullfrogs, which roared at ten o'clock each night, keeping me awake.
I needed sleep - for was I not toiling on one of the only two pictures painted out of doors during my stay in Long Island, where mosquitoes loved attacking an artist, the first place of attack being the hand underneath the palette? Fish, in blue shirt with short sleeves, sat in the afternoon sun until his face and arms peeled. A good fellow with a sense of humour. Many a cocktail have I had with him, and too many at parties either in the Fish's house, or somebody else's, Prohibition having nothing to do with it.' (loc. cit.). Unlike the present picture, the majority of Munnings' Long Island portrait compositions, including the polo team pictures, were painted in a make-shift studio near Mr Whitney's racing stables. Interestingly, the stretcher maker's stamp visible on the stretcher of the present work indicates that it is a 'Bay State Stretcher made by Wadsworth Howland, Boston'.
Sidney Webster Fish was born in 1885 in New York and trained as a lawyer. After serving in the First World War he returned to America and in the late 1920s purchased ranchland near Carmel in central California; here he spent an increasing amount of his time, working cattle and enjoying long rides. Wonderfully evocative photographs of that period show him in chaps on a Western saddle with rope at the ready. Guests at the ranch included Charles Lindbergh who conducted glider trials there, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, George Gershwin (with whom Sidney's wife Olga played duets), Sinclair Lewis, Irvin S. Cobb and many others. Parts of the film National Velvet were shot there.
An accomplished rider, Fish is portrayed in a very relaxed and natural pose out riding with the family dogs. It was unusual for Munnings to portray his subjects in informal dress - there are a number of commissions of polo players who by virtue of the sport are casually dressed, and many of the children were less formal but of his adult equestrian portraits, only a handful exist. Munnings has cleverly juxtaposed the detail of horse and rider with the more loosely composed hounds which adds to the sense of movement and the immediacy of the moment. The fact that Munnings has turned Sidney Fish's head to engage the viewer also reinforces this. The composition and technique produce a highly sympathetic and elegant portrait.
We are grateful to Lorian Peralta Ramos for her help in preparing this catalogue entry. Mrs Peralta Ramos is currently compiling a catalogue raisonné of the oil paintings of Sir Alfred Munnings.
The time he spent on Long Island was memorable and he recalls the details vividly in his autobiography: 'These Long Islanders were most hospitable folk. Their way of life in their homes on well-wooded estates adjoining each other was, without doubt, beyond description. I should want a new volume to write about them. - Of the handsome, swarthy-looking, champion polo-player, Devereux Milburn; his lovely wife; dear Louis Stoddard, who sat for me on a famous polo mare, Belle-of-All. Of Sidney Fish and his wife; and their home near a pond where dwelt some enormous bullfrogs, which roared at ten o'clock each night, keeping me awake.
I needed sleep - for was I not toiling on one of the only two pictures painted out of doors during my stay in Long Island, where mosquitoes loved attacking an artist, the first place of attack being the hand underneath the palette? Fish, in blue shirt with short sleeves, sat in the afternoon sun until his face and arms peeled. A good fellow with a sense of humour. Many a cocktail have I had with him, and too many at parties either in the Fish's house, or somebody else's, Prohibition having nothing to do with it.' (loc. cit.). Unlike the present picture, the majority of Munnings' Long Island portrait compositions, including the polo team pictures, were painted in a make-shift studio near Mr Whitney's racing stables. Interestingly, the stretcher maker's stamp visible on the stretcher of the present work indicates that it is a 'Bay State Stretcher made by Wadsworth Howland, Boston'.
Sidney Webster Fish was born in 1885 in New York and trained as a lawyer. After serving in the First World War he returned to America and in the late 1920s purchased ranchland near Carmel in central California; here he spent an increasing amount of his time, working cattle and enjoying long rides. Wonderfully evocative photographs of that period show him in chaps on a Western saddle with rope at the ready. Guests at the ranch included Charles Lindbergh who conducted glider trials there, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, George Gershwin (with whom Sidney's wife Olga played duets), Sinclair Lewis, Irvin S. Cobb and many others. Parts of the film National Velvet were shot there.
An accomplished rider, Fish is portrayed in a very relaxed and natural pose out riding with the family dogs. It was unusual for Munnings to portray his subjects in informal dress - there are a number of commissions of polo players who by virtue of the sport are casually dressed, and many of the children were less formal but of his adult equestrian portraits, only a handful exist. Munnings has cleverly juxtaposed the detail of horse and rider with the more loosely composed hounds which adds to the sense of movement and the immediacy of the moment. The fact that Munnings has turned Sidney Fish's head to engage the viewer also reinforces this. The composition and technique produce a highly sympathetic and elegant portrait.
We are grateful to Lorian Peralta Ramos for her help in preparing this catalogue entry. Mrs Peralta Ramos is currently compiling a catalogue raisonné of the oil paintings of Sir Alfred Munnings.